The Ida Lupino Effect

The Ida Lupino Effect

For some reason, an obscure movie that starred Ida Lupino has had a lasting effect on me.  The movie is called Women’s Prison and was released in 1955.  It tells the story of a brutal women’s maximum-security prison where the guards are charged with being more brutal than the inmates.  A young woman reporter named Brenda arranges to go to prison on fake charges to investigate the accusations of guard abuse.  The head screw in the women’s wing is Amelia van Zandt (Lupino) and she gets wind of the scheme and puts Brenda in solitary, so she cannot get word out of the prison to unwind the sting operation.  This film noir story is as scary as anything I can imagine because it is about being held captive by forces beyond your control even though you are in the right. This concept was picked up and repeated in a modern, high-tech setting by Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger in a 2013 movie called Escape Plan.

Last night as I watched the news (admittedly on MSNBC), I got that “trapped in prison” feeling when I heard that our Treasury Secretary has denied Congress’ legal right to obtain Donald Trump’s tax returns.  This is on the heels of listening to two days of Attorney General Barr telling Congress in so many words that he has provided the Mueller Report to the White House but won’t provide it in unredacted form to the Congress.  These are examples of Ida Lupino taking orders from the worst incarcerated mobster and controlling the warden and all the other inmates to his benefit.  It is wrong.  It is frustrating.  It is scary.

We are living in a film noir world at the moment. Film noir is about that period of the 1920’s to 1950’s that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations.  This is like a comic book I saw on the greasy wooden rack in my grandfather’s roadhouse on Rt. 34A in Lansing, New York in 1959.  I was fixated on one that pictured a group of Nazis’ ripping the blouse off a buxom young woman.  These were the “literature” offering for a group of hard-working, hard-bitten men who presumably didn’t know better.  It clearly stirred the worst prurient interests in a five-year-old boy.  I remember the feeling and remember how dirty it all felt.

I am feeling very dirty about our government right now.  I cannot, for the life of me, believe or understand how people can support and do the bidding for the truly evil person who occupies the White House.  I had been feeling good about William Barr when he went through confirmation.  All the talk about him being an institutionalist gave me hope.  In the last two days I have been appalled that he has so badly politicized his office in support of someone who is figuratively ripping the blouse off a young woman.  How anyone can find righteousness in helping Donald Trump hide his tax returns from the American public is beyond me.  I find the thought that he thinks its OK to give an investigative report on Trump to Trump is shocking for anyone, but particularly shocking for the nation’s head screw.

As for Steven Mnuchin, he was never someone who held much of any respect from anyone.  Unlike Barr, Mnuchin was never expected to do anything that was either not in his self-interest or to balance back Mr. Trump.  When I heard ex-Secretary Lawrence Summers explain how the Treasury Secretary would be taking on personal criminal liability by intervening in the request by Congress of the IRS to hand over the Trump tax returns, I thought there was some hope that he would not do so.  I’m sure the existential crisis he went through in the past few days was as difficult as anything he ever did.  I can only imagine the pressure he was getting to break the law (according to the Summer analysis) and the assurances that were made to him that he would get pardoned in any case.

Amelia van Zandt would be proud of Donald Trump.  He has managed to turn his power position into an evil empire where nothing anyone does can get through to set things right.  He is protecting himself and all his guards inside the prison.  And just to make things that much more scandalous, he is retaliating by beating the inmates by launching investigations into the very people who are investigating him…and Hilary Clinton as well, since she is the evil standard he always returns to.

This is the scariest of film noir I can imagine.  I lay in bed last night wondering if all was lost and if the forces of righteousness have lost the final battle.  Lawrence O’Donnell did not make my angst better when he laid out his prediction that when Trump gets beaten in the 2020 election (a nice ray of hope) he will, on the night before the inauguration be very busy pardoning all his friends and family, finishing with the first and only self-pardon in U.S. history.  This is Ida Lupino giving herself a universal “Get Out of Jail Free” card and waltzing off scot-free to do her evil deeds elsewhere.

The sense of futility is a very bad and powerful force and I sure hope my momentary feelings of such last night are not shared by many.  I was pleased to see Tom Steyer’s new ad this morning where he is now focusing on the release of the Mueller Report rather than that bridge-too-far of impeachment.  Don’t get me wrong, I do not think impeachment should be a bridge-too-far, but the politics seem to have overwhelmed the logical check-and-balance process that is constitutionally recommended.  In truth, I cannot imagine a stronger, more obvious cause for impeachment than what we have seen Trump engage in over the past three years. I can cite a dozen causes of action as I’m sure we all can.  It is a strange political place to be in where the obvious corrective action is not taken for fear that it will result in an even worse political risk that the bad prison guard will be granted another four-year term of office.

I wish I could remember how Brenda gets out from under Amelia van Zandt’s thumb.  I know Sly gets out by Arnold taking one for the team and a big action scene of taking on the guards.  But I feel a lot more like Brenda right now and all I want to do is sit and cry.